A 70-year-old man has been arrested over the forgery of documents including passports, after a police raid on premises at Ihala Bomiriya, Nawagamuwa, NewsFirst reported on Sunday.
Police said the raid was carried out on a tip-off. The suspect is a resident of Bomiriya, Kaduwela.
What was recovered
Officers seized 48 passports, a counterfeit detection device and a mobile phone found in the suspect’s possession.
The detection device is the notable item. Equipment of that kind is designed to authenticate documents — the tool a bank, airline or immigration counter would use to catch a forgery. In the hands of a forger it serves the opposite purpose: it lets finished work be tested against the same check it will later have to pass. Its presence suggests an operation concerned with whether its output would survive inspection, not simply with producing passable copies.
NewsFirst’s report is four sentences long and does not characterise the 48 passports — whether they are forged books, genuine books held for alteration, or documents belonging to other people.
Not reported
The report does not say whether the passports are Sri Lankan or foreign, whether any were genuine documents obtained from their holders, who the intended recipients were, or how long the operation is believed to have run. Also unstated: the suspect’s name, the charges, which police division conducted the raid, which court he will be produced before, and whether anyone else has been arrested.
No other verified newsroom had filed on the arrest at the time of writing.
Sri Lanka has seen a series of passport-fraud cases reach the courts over the past two years, most involving serving or former officials — including arrests of Immigration and Emigration deputy controllers accused of issuing passports to organised-crime figures on false information. This case differs in that the suspect is a private individual and the alleged production was carried out on residential premises; police have not linked it to any official.